44% of small biz in US, Canada to hire fewer people owing to AI: Report

Nearly 44 per cent of small business owners across the United States and Canada said that they expect to hire fewer people in the future owing to the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), a new report revealed Thursday.

Canada-based software company FreshBooks said that small business owners are less convinced that AI is coming after the jobs of their employees, reported IANS. Nearly two-thirds of the business owners disagreed that AI will replace them.

Mara Reiff, Chief Data Officer at FreshBooks said, "In the world of small business, it appears that owners don't feel particularly threatened and don't believe artificial intelligence can do their jobs just as well as they can. On the other hand, their eyes are wide open to the potential of using AI as a support to help them scale."

The survey included nearly 1,000 business owners from various industries across the United States and Canada, and almost 25 per cent of small business owners said they are currently using or testing generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Microsoft Bing.

The report suggested that two out of three business owners said that they will try generative AI for work within a year, indicating that most small business owners will be using it.

It further said that the large majority of current generative AI adopters mentioned that they are using the technology to generate text, whereas a small group is using it to create images or to conduct general business research.

About 46 per cent were not yet clear on how generative AI could benefit their business. The second reason highlighted by non-adopters was a lack of knowledge, with 32 per cent of small business owners unsure of how to begin applying generative AI to their business, the report added.

Nearly half of the small business owners (60 per cent) mentioned that AI will change their business in the next five years.

(With inputs from IANS)